Construction Start on US Vogtle Unit 4

Monday 25 November 2013

25 November 2013

On 21 November 2013, pouring of the concrete basemat for the Vogtle reactor nuclear unit 4 had been completed. Construction on unit 3 at Vogtle began in March 2013. Both reactors are AP1000 Westinghouse design located in Georgia in the south-eastern United States.

The two states in the U.S. where four AP-1000 reactors are under construction, Georgia and South Carolina, are both regulated markets, where the cost of construction is already being charged to ratepayers. As reported in WNISR in the case of Vogtle, ratepayers in Georgia have been paying for the plant since 2010 following a decision of the Public Service Commission to approve, in the face of public opposition, Construction Work In Progress legislation or CWIP. Recent evidencehas demonstrated that Georgia Power is building reactors that are not justifiable by the evolution of power consumption and at a cost the ratepayers of Georgia can hardly afford, with the latest estimate of U.S. 16 billion for both reactors at Vogtle making them the most expensive in U.S. history.

What they say…

“The Report sets forth in painstaking detail the actual experience and achievements of nuclear energy around the world.”

Peter A. Bradford

Former commissionerU.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)(in his foreword to the 2013 report)

"As ever, it’s an incredibly helpful document, with a wealth of data that I just don’t find anywhere else, brought together in such accessible and usable ways."

Jonathon Porritt

Founder DirectorForum for the FutureFormer Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission